Confession from a Former Jellyfin User

[RSVR 5]

7 hours ago, chef said:

I have a question for jelly fin users. Is it possible to side load emby plugins into the jellyrolls server?

Does it read the plugin libraries like emby would?

There's not much code in jellyfin that hasn't been changed significantly from Emby, from what I've read.  I think it'll depend on the plugin you require,  but it's certainly not going to work as easy as you are wanting. There will almost certainly be code to modify. 

Do a Google search for jellyfin and the plugin you want,  there may already be alternatives to the popular plugins. 

[RSVR 5]

12 hours ago, rooser11 said:

yea... jellyfin's still poor android tv app (even with 0.12) when it comes to subtitles handling is the only reason i am still sticking around with emby at the moment.  since my friends and family are not as picky as i am about subtitles, i am now running two docker containers, jellyfin for friends and family and emby for myself for my sony tvs.  i am keep testing other options like kodi + jellyfin or kodi + emby but dedicated clients are still better in most use cases for me. 

as you wrote, man, i cant withstand emby's theater app.  jellyfin media player is something emby devs should look into, as it works just fine with rather consistent user interface/experience across different platforms as all of them rely on the web version of the client + mpv for media playback.  

I've just bought the Fire TV Stick 4K Max. It works fast and we use lots of services on that like netshitz,  prime and IPTV. But I've just installed the Jellyfin app, found it on the fire tv store not sideloaded. It works well enough for us,  though could do with a slight layout improvement.  Its fast enough and so far its been great because one of my concerns was that I didn't want transcoding to take place on any media, which is why I've always used the Jellyfin media player direct to TV via HDMI. My media server is on the loft.  But with the Jelkyfin app on the Firestick nothing so far is requiring transcoding. 

[Carlo 4330]

On 10/29/2021 at 4:16 AM, RSVR said:

There's not much code in jellyfin that hasn't been changed significantly from Emby, from what I've read.  I think it'll depend on the plugin you require,  but it's certainly not going to work as easy as you are wanting. There will almost certainly be code to modify. 

Do a Google search for jellyfin and the plugin you want,  there may already be alternatives to the popular plugins. 

I think you got it backwards. JellyFin is based on an older version of Emby. Since then Emby has went though two big code changes so not much is the same in the newer Emby then the older version they forked.

From looking at most of the code it's basically still the same framework at heart. Yes there have been changes (many) but not really to the core of it.

[RSVR 5]

On 01/11/2021 at 23:34, cayars said:

I think you got it backwards. JellyFin is based on an older version of Emby. Since then Emby has went though two big code changes so not much is the same in the newer Emby then the older version they forked.

From looking at most of the code it's basically still the same framework at heart. Yes there have been changes (many) but not really to the core of it.

Emby plugs-in, past and present, aren't compatible with current Jellyfin, without a lot of code rewrite.

Which is why there isn't a lot of plugins available. If they were compatible, we'd all be using the older plugins.

[darkside40 91]

There are at least so many changes that porting plugins from Emby to Jellyfin can be a pain. Tried it with the Telegram Plugin. Worked for most parts, but in detail the Jellyfin Devs have thrown out important code without thinking of the consequences.

Developing plugins for Emby is a pain already because of the non existant documentation, it is no way better with Jellyfin.

[Carlo 4330]

Hey, I don't know what this code does do you?
No idea either, what do you think?
Let's remove it.  LOL

[RSVR 5]

18 hours ago, cayars said:

Hey, I don't know what this code does do you?
No idea either, what do you think?
Let's remove it.  LOL

Hilarious, not.

Clearly you're one of Emby's anal fanboys, which is probably your natural environment, but I'm not so far up Emby's bottom that I can't see the poop. I like Emby, used it for many years,  but I think the model is wrong for people like me.

For £5.99 I could have netflix. 

For £4.00 a month I could have the use of Emby theatre to play my OWN content. Well that deserves a LOL right there.

And Emby theatre was unstable at times and it rarely got updates.

Conversely, Jellyfin media player has been rock solid since I installed it and it plays all my media without transcoding and works fine.  I've also been using the Android TV app on my Fire TV stick and that too has been rock solid with no transcoding.

That is all I need,  I now I don't have to pay monthly to pay my own content. 

Too many developers have jumped on the pay monthly model,  which has segregated certain groups of people.

Their model should be more dynamic. If it had of been, they would still have me as a customer. 

[Painkiller8818 203]

Nobody prevents you from charging money for your Emby server for the people you want to let watch.

So what's wrong with getting the lifetime subscription if you get money every month?

Of course it depends on your content, if you only have 200-500 movies you will soon reach your limits. But there are enough people here who have far more movies and maybe even series than Netflix offers. Who also values quality has even the far better than Netflix, I do not see TrueHD DTS-HD-MA, DTS:X, etc.. In addition, 4K movies with just 8MBIT video bitrate also do not necessarily testify to quality but you do not have that for the aforementioned £5.99 anyway.

So if you only want to stream and hardly have any movies yourself, you should stay with Netflix etc. since there's nothing against it. But who stands on quality and maybe even has a living room cinema or a home theater room will not be happy with Netflix & Co.

And your mentioned Plugins, why don't do the jellyfin devs create them on their own?

Before i switched over to Emby from Plex i tried all other MediaCenters, also Jellyfin but it was way more spartian, no Logos for the Plugins, hardly plugins etc. Maybe this changed now but for me also the design is important of a MediaCenter.

Sure Emby ins't perfect especially with implementing new features it is a pain seeing topics open for years also bugs and security related things but so far it has the most coherent overall concept for me.

I also never wasn't a friend of the default ugly Kodi Theme, so i modded my Kodi in all ways. But for this you also need to know python which is the used coding language for Kodi.

I also have Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ but it is not the same Quality of the movies.
I think it depends a lot on your own intended use and your preferences and priorities. But for me Emby is the better choice as i have my own Cinema Room and i want perfect Video and Audio so netflix is a nice to have, but audio dynamics and picture quality is far away from the original movie on disc.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Painkiller8818

[Carlo 4330]

3 hours ago, RSVR said:

Hilarious, not.

For £5.99 I could have netflix. 

For £4.00 a month I could have the use of Emby theatre to play my OWN content. Well that deserves a LOL right there.

And Emby theatre was unstable at times and it rarely got updates.

Conversely, Jellyfin media player has been rock solid since I installed it and it plays all my media without transcoding and works fine.  I've also been using the Android TV app on my Fire TV stick and that too has been rock solid with no transcoding.

That is all I need,  I now I don't have to pay monthly to pay my own content. 

Too many developers have jumped on the pay monthly model,  which has segregated certain groups of people.

Their model should be more dynamic. If it had of been, they would still have me as a customer. 

You're conflating content with services/software which aren't the same thing.

Emby software gives you the ability to manage your content, to play it back on just about every popular device possible as well as transform the content in real-time if needed. It allows you to serve up your own content that is many times better then anything you will find on Netflix or Prime with their low bitrates and lack of good sound tracks and of course limited selection of content.

You can purchase a lifetime Emby Premiere license for less than half the price of one hard drive and is just one tiny part of the cost of running your own media server. That cost is a drop in the bucket, almost insignificant amount compared to the hardware, storage bays, drives, clients and content we've purchased that make up our media centers.

I find it kind of funny you mention both JellyFin's PC and Android TV apps because they rather suck compared to Emby's Theater for Desktop & Android TV counterparts. There is no comparison between them, really there isn't. This is the case with almost all JF clients (when they even exist). JellyFin is ok and works, as it's basically a 4 year old version of Emby on the server side, that was forked. But it's still about 4 years behind on the server side and worse on the client side. Emby transcoding for example which is the heart of any good media server blows away JF. I can transcode 4 4K HDR movies to 1080p SDR on my Celeron NAS with others direct playing while JF can't even transcode one of these streams.

Anyone running JF and uses Live TV that has to get a subscription for guide data will end up over time paying more than an Emby Premiere lifetime license which includes awesome guide data.

If JF meets your personal needs then that's great for you.  But for many of us, a one time payment of $125-$150 for a lifetime license that opens up the system to many high end features and all clients as well as provide great support is worth a lot more than that. JF can't even run a forum and had to shut it down.

Edited November 4, 2021 by cayars

[darkside40 91]

Better do not start the discussion about LiveTV and Emby. Maybe if you are in the US and you are using a HDHomerun LiveTV in Emby works.

For all other users the LiveTV function of Emby is a catastrophe and it is hilarious that this is an Emby Premium feature.

Every year i try to integrate LiveTV into Emby using a TVHeadend Server (which works perfect) as a Backend. I just want to see if there is any progress. The TVHeadend Plugin for the Emby Server never really worked, in the end the Dev was so fed up with the "support" of the Emby devs that he dropped the project. There were no changes in this plugin for over a year, same with the other LiveTV Plugins.

As workaround you could add everything as m3u, which is slow, tends to fail and is no solution for playing backend recordings.

So please dont use LiveTV as an example why Emby is better than Jellyfin, because that is not true.

[neik 837]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

Anyone running JF and uses Live TV that has to get a subscription for guide data will end up over time paying more than an Emby Premiere lifetime license which includes awesome guide data.

That really depends on the country you're living in. There are many many countries where you still have to provide EPG data yourself.

Not really a generally valid point.

[Carlo 4330]

What you said is true of course but considering that this would directly apply to anyone living in North America or the UK it's a pretty sizable amount of users it would apply to.

[rooser11 8]

1 hour ago, cayars said:

You're conflating content with services/software which aren't the same thing.

Emby software gives you the ability to manage your content, to play it back on just about every popular device possible as well as transform the content in real-time if needed. It allows you to serve up your own content that is many times better then anything you will find on Netflix or Prime with their low bitrates and lack of good sound tracks and of course limited selection of content.

You can purchase a lifetime Emby Premiere license for less than half the price of one hard drive and is just one tiny part of the cost of running your own media server. That cost is a drop in the bucket, almost insignificant amount compared to the hardware, storage bays, drives, clients and content we've purchased that make up our media centers.

I find it kind of funny you mention both JellyFin's PC and Android TV apps because they rather suck compared to Emby's Theater for Desktop & Android TV counterparts. There is no comparison between them, really there isn't. This is the case with almost all JF clients (when they even exist). JellyFin is ok and works, as it's basically a 4 year old version of Emby on the server side, that was forked. But it's still about 4 years behind on the server side and worse on the client side. Emby transcoding for example which is the heart of any good media server blows away JF. I can transcode 4 4K HDR movies to 1080p SDR on my Celeron NAS with others direct playing while JF can't even transcode one of these streams.

Anyone running JF and uses Live TV that has to get a subscription for guide data will end up over time paying more than an Emby Premiere lifetime license which includes awesome guide data.

If JF meets your personal needs then that's great for you.  But for many of us, a one time payment of $125-$150 for a lifetime license that opens up the system to many high end features and all clients as well as provide great support is worth a lot more than that. JF can't even run a forum and had to shut it down.

I disagree 100% on your assessment on Jellyfin Media Player.  It does not suck at all.  It performs just fine with mpv backend and is much more versatile in that it allows users to customize mpv.conf easily.  Jellyfin's Android TV client is still sucky when it comes to subtitles handling but for general video playback without subtitles on, it works just fine too.  But for now, yes, I think Emby's android TV client is superior.  There are many people who want to avoid transcoding to begin with, and for those people, eh, it's a tough sell.

[darkside40 91]

Apart from the broken WOL feature which nobody recognized for years the Android TV Client of Emby is really good.

[RSVR 5]

27 minutes ago, rooser11 said:

I disagree 100% on your assessment on Jellyfin Media Player.  It does not suck at all.  It performs just fine with mpv backend and is much more versatile in that it allows users to customize mpv.conf easily.  Jellyfin's Android TV client is still sucky when it comes to subtitles handling but for general video playback without subtitles on, it works just fine too.  But for now, yes, I think Emby's android TV client is superior.  There are many people who want to avoid transcoding to begin with, and for those people, eh, it's a tough sell.

I agree with you darkside. 

I used emby theater for 2 years at least.  I found it nice to look at and in general works well,  when it wasn't crashing or causing some issue, possibly related to the hideous electron crap.  Let's not even talk about the win10 store theater app, because that was truly worse than Jellyfin alternatives. 

Emby theatre was the reason I liked elsewhere, I'd had enough of it. Now if I saw that it had regular updates that kept fixing issues I would maybe have stayed,  but it didn't.  So I moved to jellyfin media player and its great.  Its not crashed once and no transcoding needed for any of my media so far,  which is something everywhere should avoid where possible. 

There are a few improvements to be made without doubt,  but the reliability outweighs emby theaters feature set imo. 

[Carlo 4330]

29 minutes ago, rooser11 said:

I disagree 100% on your assessment on Jellyfin Media Player.  It does not suck at all.  It performs just fine with mpv backend and is much more versatile in that it allows users to customize mpv.conf easily.  Jellyfin's Android TV client is still sucky when it comes to subtitles handling but for general video playback without subtitles on, it works just fine too.  But for now, yes, I think Emby's android TV client is superior.  There are many people who want to avoid transcoding to begin with, and for those people, eh, it's a tough sell.

Have you compared it to Theater for Desktop? It doesn't sound like you have or you would know mpv is also what Theater uses if you like but you have more control and can also adjust the mpv.conf file. Theater is not only a cast client like JF's shim but also a full featured client that can play live tv, games and anything else available from the Emby server including EPG guide overlays, notifications and even Emby Server admin functionality. It of course supports connecting easily to many different servers or can use Emby Connect.

But it to can act similar to a Chromecast to act like a destination that you can cast to from other clients. Again there is no comparison between the two.

[Carlo 4330]

15 minutes ago, RSVR said:

I agree with you darkside. 

I used emby theater for 2 years at least.  I found it nice to look at and in general works well,  when it wasn't crashing or causing some issue, possibly related to the hideous electron crap.  Let's not even talk about the win10 store theater app, because that was truly worse than Jellyfin alternatives. 

Emby theatre was the reason I liked elsewhere, I'd had enough of it. Now if I saw that it had regular updates that kept fixing issues I would maybe have stayed,  but it didn't.  So I moved to jellyfin media player and its great.  Its not crashed once and no transcoding needed for any of my media so far,  which is something everywhere should avoid where possible. 

There are a few improvements to be made without doubt,  but the reliability outweighs emby theaters feature set imo. 

Sounds like you haven't tried it in quite a while talking about Electron.  That's kind of ancient history that comes with adopting new technology and things.
Wait until you see the new Unified Theater app.

[rooser11 8]

2 hours ago, cayars said:

Have you compared it to Theater for Desktop? It doesn't sound like you have or you would know mpv is also what Theater uses if you like but you have more control and can also adjust the mpv.conf file. Theater is not only a cast client like JF's shim but also a full featured client that can play live tv, games and anything else available from the Emby server including EPG guide overlays, notifications and even Emby Server admin functionality. It of course supports connecting easily to many different servers or can use Emby Connect.

But it to can act similar to a Chromecast to act like a destination that you can cast to from other clients. Again there is no comparison between the two.

1. Yes I have tried both Theater for Desktop and the Store version.  I never said Theater app is bad in any way.  I just disagreed with your assessment that Jellyfin Media Player sucks because it does not.  Like you said, both Theater Desktop and Jellyfin Media Player are MPV based.  Jellyfin Media Player is closer to the web version + MPV player built in.  As someone else said, I am not a big fan of Electron either, starting with blurry font/user interface...    

2. I think you are confused between Jellyfin Media Player with Jellyfin MPV Shim.  They are both maintained by the same guy but the JMP is more unified as a client.

3. Sure, there are features that are useful on Emby but not everyone wants them.  While my friends and family and myself paid the client unlocking for about $80 as we only care about direct play of media contents, having forced to pay monthly subscription on PC devices turned me off.  I know that the unlocking code often goes on sale during BF for $99, but still again, being limited to 25 devices that I cannot really see or control doesn't feel great.

4. Just to be clear, I am not bashing emby here.  Just sharing my experience with JF recently.

Edited November 4, 2021 by rooser11

[Chyron 221]

8 hours ago, RSVR said:

For £5.99 I could have netflix. For £4.00 a month I could have the use of Emby theatre to play my OWN content. Well that deserves a LOL right there.

You're expecting the Emby devs to work for free?

 

21 minutes ago, rooser11 said:

being limited to 25 devices that I cannot really see or control doesn't feel great

25 devices that are concurrently using Premiere features. If they don't make use of Premiere features, they don't count. If they do, then when they stop they again don't count.

 

4 hours ago, cayars said:

I find it kind of funny you mention both JellyFin's PC and Android TV apps because they rather suck compared to Emby's Theater for Desktop & Android TV counterparts.

While you guys bicker about whether Jellyfin or Emby is better, I'm sitting here waiting for audiobooks to actually work. As of this moment, on Stable, they don't for either JF or Emby despite my bugging the Emby devs for years.

Yes, I know Album-level resume is coming on Emby. It's about damn time too.

 

Edited November 4, 2021 by Chyron

[rooser11 8]

21 minutes ago, Chyron said:

25 devices that are concurrently using Premiere features. If they don't make use of Premiere features, they don't count. If they do, then when they stop they again don't count.

i am not really concerned about the number but the fact that this is being monitored and controlled by emby and i cannot even see or control just bothers me.  

[Chyron 221]

12 minutes ago, rooser11 said:

i am not really concerned about the number but the fact that this is being monitored and controlled by emby and i cannot even see or control just bothers me.  

I hear you.

I think their reasoning is that they want people to just use Emby for their families and perhaps close friends, and do not want to run afoul of copyright holders by opening it up to people using it as a Netflix of publicly shared potentially pirated content, especially while profiting from doing so.

They used to have a smaller device limit, but they increased it when a user said he had a large nuclear family.

...what they should do is have a status window that shows which devices are using Premiere slots.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Chyron

[Carlo 4330]

13 minutes ago, rooser11 said:

1. Yes I have tried both Theater for Desktop and the Store version.  I never said Theater app is bad in any way.  I just disagreed with your assessment that Jellyfin Media Player sucks because it does not.  Like you said, both Theater Desktop and Jellyfin Media Player are MPV based.  Jellyfin Media Player is closer to the web version + MPV player built in.  As someone else said, I am not a big fan of Electron either, starting with blurry font/user interface...    

2. I think you are confused between Jellyfin Media Player with Jellyfin MPV Shim.  They are both maintained by the same guy but the JMP is more unified as a client.

When your right, your right.  I was thinking the shim version and not JF Media Player.  JFMP is much closer to Theater Desktop just lacking in UI polish and some features but it's probably the best JF client I've tried. I could use it as my daily driver (for PC) and be happy with it. They did a good job with that client.

 

[Carlo 4330]

2 minutes ago, Chyron said:

I hear you.

I think their reasoning is that they want people to just use Emby for their families and perhaps close friends, and do not want to run afoul of copyright holders by opening it up to people using it as a Netflix of publicly shared potentially pirated content, especially while profiting from doing so.

They used to have a smaller device limit, but they increased it when a user said he had a large nuclear family.

It's a fair number that works for probably 99% of people. Yet it discourages Emby Server's use for pirate sites which can get you in trouble with the App Stores.

[RSVR 5]

1 hour ago, Chyron said:

You're expecting the Emby devs to work for free?

Yes

32 minutes ago, Chyron said:

 

I expect regular development and bug fixes, which over the two years I used it never happened,  not at an acceptable level anyway. 

I didn't use all the features of Desktop Theater, in fact,  I only used it to stream my own content, and,  like many others,  when that is all you use it for, £4 per month is ridiculous.

In my opinion,  basic theater should have a small fee to use the basic features,  then plugins and other features could be premium. 

I use a lot of smart home software,  I have no problem in paying for software,  as long as it's in current development and the devs give a shit enough to listen and fix bugs

Edited November 4, 2021 by RSVR

[RSVR 5]

I'd also add,  that many of the opensource software that I use, I donate $$$ to the cause,  because even though people develop it for free,  I appreciate their effort. So premium pay for products should be even better than the free stuff